


Too Much Quiet

by CobaltStargazer



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Angst, Cheating, F/M, Loneliness, angsty sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-24
Updated: 2014-05-24
Packaged: 2018-01-26 08:11:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1681139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CobaltStargazer/pseuds/CobaltStargazer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles doesn't always get it. Connor gets it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Too Much Quiet

**Author's Note:**

> This is a 'What If' that takes place during the summer Angel was at the bottom of the ocean. I know Connor isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I always liked him, so here we are.

The hotel was so quiet at night. It didn't used to be this quiet.

Fred couldn't sleep because Charles wasn't in the bed with her. He'd gone out with his old running buddies because he was restless. She'd offered to accompany him, but he'd told her it was too dangerous, that they'd be going into rough territory. He'd taken one of the crossbows and a bandolier of stakes, kissed her on the forehead, and departed. The Texan had turned off the light after he'd left, tried to go back to sleep. But there was too much silence. Before, she'd have gone downstairs and talked to Wesley wile he pored over his books, or crept into Cordelia's room had talked to her. In a real pinch, she might have been able to catch Angel heating up a cup of blood in the kitchen.

But that was before everything had changed.

Now Wesley had been exiled, Cordy had disappeared, and even Angel was AWOL. The Hyperion, which had become her refuge after the escape from Pylea, was now almost like a graveyard. The halls echoed, and where there had once been laughter and camaraderie, there was now uncertainty and fear. Fred rolled onto her side, turned on the lamp. The clock on the bedside table said it was two-eighteen.

The hallway was so familiar that she didn't need light, and the diminutive brunette padded soundlessly across the floorboards. There was a strip of light visible underneath the door she paused in front of, and after a minute she tapped on it quietly.

"Connor? Are you awake?"

He'd heard the footsteps, and he'd thought about turning off the lamp so she'd think he was asleep. Instead he stayed where he was, on the mattress he'd dragged into the corner. So that he could sleep with his back to the wall. In Quartoth, you always guarded your back. 

Connor counted his own heartbeats as he studied his side of the door. He liked Fred, and unlike Gunn, she had tried to be kind to him. He had heard them talking, or rather he had heard _him_ talking.

**I don't trust him, Fred. He's supposed to be helping us look for Angel, but he doesn't seem to be trying very hard. For all I know, he's behind this whole thing."**

They didn't know what he'd done, though. They couldn't know.

The Destroyer listened to his breathing for another two minutes, then rolled to the side and got up. He was tall and gangly, deceptively thin. He was wearing blue pajamas. When he'd first gotten back, he'd slept naked, but he'd found some pajamas in his room one day, so he'd decided to put them on. He could only presume that Fred had put them there. Gunn wouldn't have bothered, and Angel...was indisposed.

The door creaked when he opened it. The Texan was wearing a long cotton nightgown .Her feet were bare. Long brown hair cascaded past her shoulders. His blue eyes looked into her brown ones. He pushed battle-hardened fingers through shaggy hair.

"When will he be back?"

"I don't know. Whenever he's back."

Connor grunted a response, stepped away from the door. Fred followed after him, watched him drop his weight on the mattress. He plucked idly at the sheet, watching her. His assessing would have made anyone else nervous, but when you were used to being examined like a lab specimen, the searching look in those blue eyes wasn't unsettling in the slightest. The silence grew heavy, expectant.

_Say something. Say anything._

"Do you want to?" His voice was low, his narrow shoulders taut with worry that she'd say no. With the guilt if she said yes hovering in the wings. His other father - his _real_ father - had said that they'd been brought together by God, and his murder had filled the Destroyer with righteous purpose. Now, with that purpose carried out, he felt lost, as if a hole had opened up inside him, and he had nothing to fill it with. 

Fred took a step towards him. She knew little about Connor's experiences in Quartoth because he mostly refused to talk about it, but she'd lived in the hell that was Pylea for five years, first as a slave and then as a fugitive. Some of the trauma had faded, and she'd been able to put on a happy face when everyone was still here. But as the group had fragmented, so had her ability to pretend to be fully well. Charles was a soothing presence, a comfort, but there was something in Connor that reached out to her. Even if it was only their mutual dysfunction, knowing that someone close by could see the broken thing inside you for what it was made those jagged edges a little less sharp.

"Yeah.Yeah, I do."

He held out his hands, and she took them. Both sets of palms were callused, his from using weapons, hers from laboring when she'd been called a cow. She straddled his lap, and he scooted back on the mattress, pulling her with him.

The kiss was not gentle, but this wasn't about tenderness. Fred had had to guide Connor through it the first couple of times, but when it came to physicality he was a _very_ fast learner. Growing up in a place where everything wanted to kill you, it was vital to know how to hurt things before they hurt you. Once the Texan had started to show him how to do things that felt _good_ , he paid close attention. 

She could feel his erection when it began tenting his pajama bottoms, and she squirmed against it. He still didn't have much technique, but he was vigorous and finesse wasn't what she was after. Charles was gentle, gentle to the point that it was a little maddening sometimes. She didn't want to be treated like fragile glass, as if she would shatter into pieces. Making love had its place, but sometimes she wanted to fuck.

"Fred..."

Connor's voice was strained, and he pushed his tongue into her mouth as her slight weight wriggled against him. She was small and looked delicate, but he could feel the strength in her hands and her arms. The hollowness was gone for now. Her hair fell around him like a curtain. His hands fisted into her nightgown, and he twisted his hips to flip her onto her back. She hit the mattress with a soft "Oof!" and he pulled his pajama top over his head and cast it aside. He was pale, and several scars marked his flesh. He tossed his head like an impatient lion to get the hair out of his eyes.

Fred felt a quiver of something so sharp that it sucked the breath out of her lungs. He looked like a warrior, a soldier from some distant planet. No wonder vampires ran from him. Her small hands were bunching her gown up around her hips, and she sat up to take it off. Cloth obscured her vision, and the Destroyer's nimble fingers helped her finish removing it. Her breasts were small. Rough palms cupped them, and she arched her back.

"C'mere, sugah," she twanged, and he slipped a hand between her thighs. She was already damp, and he slipped a finger into her up to the second joint, the way she'd showed him. Their mouths slammed together. Her palm slid across his groin, and he pushed his hips towards her hand. His mouth wandered down the side of her neck, and he nipped at warm flesh. She was rubbing between his legs, giving him a clumsy handjob through fabric. He bit her softly. She whined.

" _Fred..._ "

She worked her thumbs under the waistband of his pajama bottoms, started to work them down. Sharp hipbones came into view. Connor couldn't fully abandon her throat, but he helped as much as he could. His erection sprang into view, and she brushed it with her fingertips. He grabbed for her wrist. He had staying power to spare, but he could only take so much.,

The Texan was on her back now, lifting her knees. Right or wrong, this was what they needed. As damaged as Connor might be, as irrevocably fucked up she herself might have become, when he was riding her, the broken thing was fixed for a short while. Fred held out her arms.

"Come down here, honey."

The Destroyer pushed his cock into her an inch at the time, groaning as she sheathed him. She was hot and wet and tight, and as he slid deeper she grabbed for his shoulders. His thigh muscles trembled. She pulled his hair. He bit the side of her neck. Gunn would kill him in his sleep if he knew.

"I love you."

"I love you too, Connor."

Whether they meant t or not was up for grabs, but it felt real, and that was all that mattered.

The Destroyer started to move, and Fred bucked underneath him. This was what she wanted, the borderline roughness of someone unpolished. Charles was a good lover, but he was so careful with her that it was as if he thought he'd break something. As if he didn't know that she'd survived in a place where she wouldn't have if she wasn't strong. Connor saw her strength, saw it and treated her accordingly. Even if it was only during the times when she was on his bed.

He was mapping Fred's neck with his mouth, licking and sucking as he thrusts between her legs. He wanted to please her, both because he cared in his own stunted way and because she had reached for hm first. In moments like this, he was neither Connor nor Steven, but some other person, an amalgam of the two halves of himself. It would hurt later, when he was alone again and the hollowness was waiting to devour him, but right now, that hole inside him was filled to bursting.

If she knew what he'd done, she'd hate him. He knew that. Connor tucked his chin into Fred's shoulder, twisted his hips to rub against a different spot inside her. She squalled, matching him thrust for thrust. He grabbed the edge of the mattress, established a white-knuckled grip as he doubled his strokes. Her breath was hot in his ear, ruffling his already unruly hair.

She had locked her ankles together at the base of his spine, and thank God she'd gone on the pill when she'd taken up with Charles. She could feel the clench slithering around in her gut. She was gonna...she was gonna...

And then she did, tipping over the brink into an orgasm that picked her up with both hands and gave her a rough shake. She couldn't even yell because there wasn't enough oxygen in her lungs. There might not have been enough oxygen in the room. Hell, in the _world_.

Connor spilled into Fred's willing body, and his rhythm became short and choppy. His hipbones dug into the soft flesh of her slender thighs. Tomorrow, she would probably have bruises. Some dim part of him, the atavistic nature that made him the Destroyer, was pleased at that. If he marked her, that meant that she was at least partly his.

"I love you." That time, he gurgled it. Small hands stroked his sweaty back.

"I love you too, Connor." And she did love him, even if it was only a little or just for these times.

She would not sleep here. They didn't cuddle afterwards. She would wait until he'd fallen into a doze, then put her nightgown back on and make her way back to the room she shared with Charles. She would shower, then slip back into her own bed. In the morning, she and Connor would pretend as if this never happened. The places that hurt had been soothed for now. When - if - the unofficial little family they'd made here came back together, there would be no more need for this. Fred looked at Connor where he lay on his side. His eyes were half-open, dark like the ocean just after a storm had passed. The Texan smiled at him, and he smiled back. She leaned over, kissed him very softly on the mouth.

He was almost too tired to kiss her back, but he managed it. He knew she would leave after he dozed off. And that was okay. He wasn't sure he could sleep with her next to him. If only because he might talk in his sleep. He would not - could not - tell her about what he'd done. Ever. He didn't want her to hate him.

Not when he already hated himself more than enough for both of them.


End file.
